3 days ago
‘Gap year' troops to get the Army growing
Sir Keir Starmer has bet on a gap year army to fight the Russian threat.
A new review aiming to transform defence over the next decade recommends school and college leavers spend a year in uniform to test whether they enjoy forces life amid efforts to solve a crisis in recruitment.
The Strategic Defence Review, which draws on more than 8,000 responses from 1,700 individuals, political parties and organisations, seeks to overhaul the way wars are fought, with a focus on drones, AI and autonomous platforms. Its recommendations have been accepted in full by the Government.
Troops numbers are set to be increased – although a detailed timeline has not been set – Britain's aircraft carriers will become 'hybrid' and there will be better use of fighter jets to ensure they are cost effective.
The overall aim of the review is to make the army 'ten times more lethal' by 2035.
People and education
The review puts people at the heart of its 'transformation' of defence. This includes improving recruitment to tackle the hiring crisis, with innovative new ways such as promoting military 'gap years' for school and college leavers.
It points to the Australian military's gap years as an 'exciting model' to learn from.
Meanwhile, younger pupils will be taught the importance of the British military in school. They will also have lessons on what a career can look like in the Armed Forces, from traditional soldiering to computer coding.
Meanwhile, the review suggests that Cadet Forces should be expanded across the country by 30 per cent by 2030, with an ambition to reach 250,000 cadets in the 'longer term'. The number currently stands at 140,000.
A major problem with recruitment is how long it takes for people to be signed up. However, the review calls for a focus on 'speed' by 'drastically shortening' the period between application and actual joining. It said this could be solved by being more flexible in medical and fitness standards and shorter commitments that give people a flavour of military careers.
A retention crisis has also plagued all three forces. One answer to solve this is introducing flexible working in order to support families. This will work by allowing personnel to 'dial their commitment up and down throughout their career', which is described as a shift from current practice. It calls for greater stability in locations and postings for personnel to be embraced, as well as more options to support home ownership for troops.
Whole of society approach
The report has called on the British public to 'harbour no illusions about the threats it faces'. It warns that the nature of attacks on the UK will change 'and intensify' which will require a nationwide response. It says that lessons learnt from Ukraine show the need for 'national resilience'. This needs to be a collective response to threats both above and below 'the threshold of an armed attack', which would come from industry, the finance sector, civil society, academia and education.
It stresses the importance of 'reconnecting with society'. This will be achieved by promoting a 'national conversation' that raises awareness of the threats to the UK, what the Armed Forces do to deter and protect the nation, and how fundamentally to counter threats to false information that circulates. It warns: 'Decades of fighting wars overseas and shrinking personnel numbers have led to a society with less awareness of defence.'
Other suggestions to promote the work of the British military include public engagement days.
Drones and AI
As John Healey, the Defence Secretary, said in his foreword of the review: ' Drones now kill more people than traditional artillery in the war in Ukraine, and whoever gets new technology into the hands of their Armed Forces the quickest will win.'
He added that, with the advance of technology, future battlespaces will be a combination of 'conventional and digital warfighters' owing to drones, AI and autonomous weapons that compliment 'the heavy metal of tanks and artillery'.
The review states that the effective use of uncrewed autonomous platforms to create 'agility, lethality, mass and endurance' is crucial to how the forces' strength will be perceived by adversaries - as much as the number of people and equipment it has to its name.
The review urges the Government to embrace new technologies that are redefining warfare, including AI, machine learning and data science – all of which improve the quality and speed of decision making and operational effectiveness.
It highlights robotics and autonomy and enhanced precision weapons that enable greater accuracy from larger ranges. It also focuses on the importance of directed energy weapons such as DragonFire, hypersonic missiles that travel over five times the speed of sound and space-based capabilities as adversaries focus on developing ways to disrupt military and civilian assets in and from space.
Drones and lasers together will be handed a total of £5 billion in new investment.
Areas that require particular attention include advances in quantum computing that can reduce reliance on GPS, which is vulnerable to jamming, cyber threats becoming harder to navigate as technology becomes more advanced, and biological threats that can cause 'enormous harm' in the form of new pathogens and other weapons of mass destruction.
Maritime
The review has committed to creating a ' new hybrid navy' that will build on the Dreadnought and SSN-Aukus submarines, as well as cutting-edge warships and support ships, while transforming the carriers into 'hybrid air wing' vessels that can act as a launch pad for drones as well as aircraft.
It also encourages the forces to introduce new autonomous vessels to patrol the North Atlantic and beyond.
It calls on the Royal Navy to play a leading and coordinating role in securing undersea pipelines, cables and maritime traffic. It points out that the 'smooth running of daily life and the economy' depends on Critical National Infrastructure not being interfered with and warns: 'Based on adversaries' current doctrine, in the event of major war the UK should expect sub-threshold attacks'.
It tells the Government that it must articulate as a priority which elements of UK CNI are 'integral to to sustaining operations and projecting force overseas'.
It says that the Navy must move towards working with a mix of uncrewed, crewed and autonomous surface and sub-surface vessels and aircraft, as well as developing the next-generation capabilities such as 12 new nuclear-powered SSN-AUKUS submarines.
A total of £15 billion will be invested in new nuclear warheads.
In order to deter and defend in the Euro-Atlantic the Navy has been urged to focus on its Atlantic Bastion plan, which works to secure the North Atlantic from a modernising Russian submarine force, and Type 45 destroyers which provide air and missile defence.
Land domain
While the Army has used advanced simulation to provide effective training, the report warns that personnel must not lose sight of their live fire ability over distances of 100km or more, which 'remains essential to assuring the Army's fighting capability'.
Despite the move towards a greater focus on autonomous systems and cyber, it also adds that the Army will continue to need armoured platforms and attack helicopters to 'confront a major state adversary, fighting to take and hold ground', showing that traditional methods of fighting are not obsolete yet.
However, it acknowledges that autonomous and uncrewed land and aerial systems are an essential component of land warfare. It is called the 'recce-strike' approach where existing capabilities and technologies are combined with evolving technology. It urges the Army to be 'bolder in its ambition, seeking to increase lethality ten fold'.
Air domain
The review insists that the RAF keeps up with air evolution, transitioning from crewed combat air platforms to a Future Combat Air System which is a combination of crewed, uncrewed and autonomous platforms.
It says new autonomous platforms must be designed to operate in collaboration with the fourth, fifth and future generations of combat aircraft and to be able to operate on the UK's two aircraft carriers.
It suggests that to ensure value for money, the new F-35s to be procured should be a combination of both F-35 a and b models. It says further E-7 Wedgetail airborne early warning and control aircraft should be bought when funding permits, and suggests a cost-sharing arrangement with Nato allies as a way to achieve this.
It says the current flying training arrangements for fast jets must be 'urgently revised' to optimise capacity and advises that Hawk T1 and Hawk T2 should be replaced with a cost-effective fast jet trainer.
It also calls on Brize Norton, the RAF base, to allow commercial facilities to use it should it be unavailable for operations.
Space domain
The report notes how congested and contested space is becoming, flagging that operational satellite fleets of China and Russia grew by 70 per cent in 2019-21. As a result, it says that defence must 'improve its ability to deter threats to and if necessary protect its interests in space'.
It calls on the MoD to invest in the resilience of UK military space systems, focusing on space control, decision advantage and capabilities. It instructs the MoD to seek partners to develop a next-generation, overhead, persistent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capability. It says that by doing this they can warn and track threats in the Euro-Atlantic.
Industry
The report states that the effectiveness of a military can be measured by how quickly an industry can innovate and bring new technology into operation.
The review says that for defence to be fully successful it must 'develop an understanding of the relationship between its military competitiveness and the performance of the defence innovation and industrial base'.
It suggests as a starting point that the MoD tracks metrics for the lethality of Armed Forces, productivity within defence and industry and also the national economic impact of defence spending and procurement.
It says that at the heart of the transformation of defence should be developing a 'thriving, resilient innovation and industrial base' which can scale innovation and production.
The report adds that it is not 'new' to look to better the relationship between defence and industry, but that it has yet to make the 'cultural change' for success.
